Court Orders

The Obama administration “has not shown any inclination to rescind” its requirement that many religious employers pay for contraceptives for their workers, so “we need to get this mandate overturned” by the courts, said Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of Miami on Oct. 19. The archbishop also announced that the Archdiocese of Miami had joined the 50 or so other Catholic dioceses, universities and entities throughout the nation that have filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services because of the contraceptive mandate. “We feel it is a violation” of the First Amendment, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and H.H.S.’s rule-making authority, the archbishop said. He added that Vice President Joseph Biden spoke “untruthfully” during the vice presidential debate on Oct. 11 when he said that “no religious institution...has to pay for contraception; none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide.”